After years of war in Somalia,
schools have re-opened despite poor conditions.
Although governments may
no longer be trying to transform pastoralists into settled farmers, they are still
trying to transform them into “something else,” such as “modern” livestock producers
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All too often, education
has been touted as the key to transforming nomadic identity, which goes a long way
towards explaining its patchy record
 Life in the dry lands is harsh. There is
no sheltering shade, the sun cracks the soil and watering the animals is a daunting
task in the dry season. But the pastoralists know how to survive. They know that
nobody can go without eating and drinking for as long as they can, except perhaps
the other group of pastoralists on the other side of the escarpment. When the rainy
season finally comes, if indeed it ever does, the pasture is glorious and the herd
fattens quickly. They know their animals one by one, their colour and behaviour,
their “parents” and so forth, going back several generations. To the pastoralists,
these animals are more than beautiful; they have individuality.
A clash
of cultures
When addressing the education
of pastoralists, it is all too often forgotten that to be a “pastoralist” means being
Turkana (Kenya), Rabari (India), Qashqa’i (Iran), or from some other community. It
is an identity these people take pride in, a complex and sophisticated way of life
which, with all its harshness, they profoundly love. Education, however, has mainly
been intended as an instrument to transform the pastoralists into something else.
The history of mass education programmes for nomads has been that of an encounter
between people seeking new ways of adapting to an evolving context– monetarization
of the economy, commodification of labour and privatization of land–and a broad set
of actors, from policy-makers and project officers to teachers and local officials,
who widely believe that nomads have to be “saved” from their way of life. It is upon
this cultural clash that the “problem” of delivering mass education to nomads has
been framed and policy solutions devised.
Nomadic herders number several tens of millions of people, mainly in African dry
lands, the Middle East, and south-west, south and central Asia. They include some
of the most vulnerable of all southern populations. They often make a significant
contribution to national food production. Mobility, harsh environmental conditions
and remoteness have always stood as barriers to the provision of formal education,
and millions of nomadic pastoral children remain outside the system.
Political
motives underpin initiatives
Mongolia, a country where
the majority of the population is nomadic, stands as a case apart. Compulsory state
education for children between eight and 18 began in 1940. The system relied on hundreds
of schools with dormitory facilities built in all rural settlements. Education was
free, accounting for more than15 per cent of GDP. Schools were well staffed, with
highly motivated and comparatively well-paid teachers, most of whom came from a nomadic
background. Within the following 20 years, Mongolia passed from around two to more
than 90 per cent literacy and by 1990, before liberalization, the country had almost
reached a rate of 100 per cent. This unprecedented figure–unmatched ever since with
a nomadic population–can hardly be explained in terms of innovative programme content.
The standard curriculum was highly academic and teacher-centred in nature. Instead,
the crucial factor had more to do with a sympathetic human environment and the absence
of a rift between the culture of the school and that of the nomads.
But Mongolia is a chiefly nomadic country. Although scarce documentation and widely
differing contexts make it difficult to paint a general history of nomadic education,
political motives always underpin initiatives. In Somalia, a short-lived rural development
campaign launched in 1974 took a bold approach: the government simply closed down
all secondary schools for one year and sent 20,000 students and teachers to the countryside
to teach literacy to the largely nomadic population. They used methods learnt in
Koranic schools, writing letters on a blackboard, reading them aloud and asking pupils
to repeat. This was, at least in intention, a two-way campaign, as one of the slogans
underlined: “What you know, teach; what you do not know, learn.” Hindered by the
1974 drought, the campaign was nevertheless a surprising success: in only seven months,
910,000 of the 1.2 million students registered sat the final test and 800,000 passed.
A more common reason for providing education to nomadic pastoralists emerged when
a number of newly independent African states realized that some of the dry lands
and the livestock were valuable “national” resources. As such, pastoralists had to
become more closely integrated into the economy, notably by increasing production.
The task of “modernizing” the nomads was left to education. The Kenyan case is instructive.
In 1970, the Parliament amended the Anglo-Maasai agreement, which kept the reserves
closed to non-Maasai, and launched a programme aimed at improving enrolment by setting
up low-cost boarding schools. But the new educational facilities were flooded by
pupils from non-pastoral ethnic groups and were disregarded by the Maasai. In the
late 1970s, when an evaluation found that the boarding schools were operating below
capacity, the government decided to temporarily cut funds to the programme. Some
analysts argued that carrying out education in the absence of economic development
and related social services had been a mistake. The 1984-1988 Development Plan concentrated
on improving livestock resources, marketing facilities and banking services, assuming
that demand for education would stem from increased monetary resources. Rather than
look at the programme’s shortcomings, the blame was put on pastoralists’ “backward”
way of life. All that policymakers had to do was reverse the equation: from education
as a path towards development, to development as a path towards education.
Mainstream explanations for the failure of education provision in pastoral areas
usually blame the recipients. It is assumed that the problem stems from the nomads’
obsolete way of life and cultural conservatism, rather than from the incapacity of
a national system to respond to the living conditions of a significant number of
its citizens. Research is practically inexistent on the impact of education. Figures
on enrolment and attendance rely on local records that are often incomplete and inaccurate,
yet these figures are usually the main yardstick used to measure the outcomes of
education programmes. The most profound impact of these programmes remains an untold
story. Social norms, networks and relationships of authority play a critical role
in pastoral livelihood systems, which education often tends to undermine. A divide
often sets in between educated and non-educated members of communities. Recent research
underlines how projects of directed change are embedded into education programmes
for nomads, tending to antagonize local learning and socialization patterns. Although
governments may no longer be trying to transform pastoralists into settled farmers,
they are still trying to transform them into “something else,” such as “modern” livestock
producers, as in Nigeria.
Hooking
nomads to the system
With the push for decentralization
and cost-sharing in education over the past ten years, some governments are turning
to innovative partnerships with international development agencies rather than investing
in mass education programmes. Pastoral areas are particularly targeted, given that
they have the lowest literacy rates. A few non-formal education programmes are now
focusing on providing a service directly related to life in pastoral societies. By
moving away from the emphasis on productivity, there is room to address crucial livelihood
issues such as resource access, conflict management and local advocacy. In Senegal,
training modules have been developed in local languages for pastoralists. In Kenya,
an out-of-school programme launched in 1992 has set up learning centres offering
non-formal primary education to nomad children, with strong community involvement.
But these alternative approaches do not address the structural inadequacy of education
systems. They are often about getting beneficiaries “hooked” to “fit the system,”
and are but a parallel second-class education. Unless the power issue behind the
formal/non-formal divide is addressed, even the best education programmes may only
result into channelling out-of-school children into persistently unresponsive systems.
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